Long story short it looks like Sir Michael Bishop will be selling his stake in BMI to Lufthansa, which means they’ll basically have full control. Yadda yadda yadda. If you want details on the business end of the deal, check out the Financial Times article.

More important to me is what this potentially means for those of us that have been accruing miles in what many would consider to be one of the best frequent flyer programs out there. Even though many of us never fly BMI, we credit flights under 500 miles to them, use them for double dipping with Hilton, and of course for all kinds of other partner activity such as car rentals.

The good news is that it looks like we’re safe until January 12, the earliest the option will become effective. So, if you have BMI miles to burn, then burn baby, burn! Even if you don’t think you’ll be able to travel on the dates you book, you’re better off booking before January 12 and paying the change fee than paying LH’s inflated award costs.

It’s also worth mentioning that we really don’t know what’ll happen. The announcement was just made today, so it’s way too early to be certain what’s going to happen. That being said, I’m betting we’ll see “enhancements” from the BMI side of things.

Another interesting opportunity to explore is possibly matching to BMI before January 12. BMI is one of the few international airlines that readily status matches to their top tier, which gives you, among other things, complimentary lounge access on all Star Alliance flights, even domestic ones. Considering that the program could very well be merged into the LH Miles & More program, I’m betting we won’t see status matches anymore. Therefore it’s basically a “free” status match, at first to BMI Gold and then if the programs merge probably into LH Senator. Since I just matched to NW Plat I should be able to further match to BMI Gold, which I might just do in December.

Anyway, those are my two cents for the time being. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.

Yes, that’s right, I said it! I’m sure many (if not most) of my readers measure their wealth not only in $$$, but also in terms of miles. Heck, many of us are willing to cash in quite a bit of $$$ for miles, so it only makes sense.

But when do we take our mileage obsession just one step too far? Well, that depends on who you are, but I guess I’m pretty moderate in this regard, since I don’t understand some people and their darn mileage obsession.

To explain, let me point to one popular mileage earning opportunity that many on FlyerTalk participate in — the art of buying presidential coins directly from the US mint with free shipping, and then in turn bringing those coins to the bank. Basically you’re generating “free” activity on your credit card. There’s a massive thread on FlyerTalk discussing the practice, so if you haven’t heard of it yet, check it out.

Coins can be bought in $250 boxes, and there are limits (maximum of two boxes per president). So per box, I’d say we’re looking at $5 worth of miles at most (assuming one values their miles at two cents each, which is on the high end). But is all that really worth the hassle? First you have to be worried that the coins make it to you without being stolen (since no signature is required), then you have to lug pounds upon pounds of coins to the bank, and then you have to convince the teller to accept them, and if you’re lucky you’ll only get a dirty look. I guess if you’re dropping by the bank anyway I can understand it, but still, assuming you take two boxes at a time, we’re talking $10 at most worth of miles. I know many drive to the bank just to deposit these, in which case I really can’t rationalize it.

Not surprisingly I haven’t taken advantage of this offer because I simply can’t imagine it being worth the hassle.

There are other offers, on the other hand, which I think make perfect sense. For example, getting $1,000 worth of travelers checks from your local AMEX travel center (without fees) and paying for it with your AMEX co-branded credit card. You earn 1,000 miles/points for nothing, and it’s a lot less of a hassle to deposit travelers checks than hundreds of coins, in my opinion. Of course this only makes sense for those that have an AMEX travel center in close proximity. My brother, for example, goes to one of the AMEX offices during his lunch break once a week to pick up travelers checks with his SPG credit card. He’s earning 1,000 points per week this way, and since he walks there, there are no added costs (such as gas, cab fare, etc.). For those not familiar with this practice, check out the massive thread on FlyerTalk for more details.

Of course not all of us have the luxury of living near an AMEX traveler center, in which case AMEX has a promotion right now to have travelers checks mailed to you fee free through the end of the year. You simply pay $5.95 shipping and handling, and it’s delivered to your door. You’re basically paying 0.6 cents per miles, which is a great deal. Since I don’t live near an AMEX travel center, this is the option I take advantage of. For more details on this check out View from the Wing.

At the end of the day we each value our miles and also the value of the adventure of collecting miles differently. Lots of times it’s not about how much the miles are really worth, but the quest of earning as many miles as possible for as little as we can, turning everyday activities into unforgettable vacations. Heck, of all people I shouldn’t be talking, since I’ve reached into a trash can on more than one occasion to get the cap of a Coke product to earn My Coke Rewards points.

My friend Ryan recently redeemed DL miles for an F award on SQ, without a doubt one of the best redemptions using DL miles. Since many people seem to be interested in such an award, he graciously offered to share his experiences:

I’ve had around 100k DL miles sitting around for a few years with no exact plan for them. When I got wind of the recent DL/Budget promotions that allowed one to earn 7550 miles per one-day rental, I decided it was time to top-up my account so that I could go after one of DL’s best award options: the SQ partner award to Asia in F.

This award costs 140,000 miles plus taxes and fees (more on those later) and provides the following:
* Transport from the US city of your choice to/from the SQ gateway city on DL metal in F
* Transport on SQ from the US to Southeast Asia

To get my mileage up to the award threshold, I booked five one-day SUV rentals spread out over two weekends from the BOS Budget location. The rates at this location aren’t the best but the convenience was worth it for me. The rentals were around $46 all-in each. Five of these yielded 37,750 DL miles at a rate of 0.6 CPM (or $230 total).

The miles from the DL/Budget promotion posted as expected on October 3 around 11AM. I called the DL partner desk within minutes and started working with the representative to find an itinerary that met my needs. My goal was the get a ticket from BOS to either BKK or SIN for the last week in March 2009. A secondary goal was to fly SQ1/2 in at least one of the direction in hopes of scoring an elusive F award seat on one of the A380 WhaleJets.

Just for kicks, I decided to use the ANA tool to check StarNet award availability on my preferred dates before I called into DL. The following routes (and their reverse routes) were all zero for the dates of my choice: JFK-FRA-SIN, LAX-NRT-SIN, and SFO-HKG-SIN. Things were not looking good from the Star Alliance perspective. Good thing I was using DL miles!

Calling DL to book one of these awards is a bit of a twisty-turning process. Most of their agents are not familiar with these awards and I got bounced around a few times before I found the correct department. What you need to do is call during daytime hours (I forget the exact times) and ask for the “International Partner Desk.” These are the folks that manage the SQ bookings.

The rep that answered the phone was well-versed in this award and immediately got to work on my itinerary. She was competent, polite, and more than willing to do the necessary grunt work on her end.

Amazingly enough, seats on SQ were available for the exact dates I requested with an outbound on SQ11 (via NRT) and a return on SQ2 (SIN-HKG-SFO). Similar options were also available on adjacent days. Availability was much more sparse on the intra-Asia and intra-North America connecting flights – go figure!

Side note: The DL/SQ award also allows for RTW routing (ie TPAC+TATL) for these awards. For that reason it gives yet a higher degree of flexibility that you won’t get from the UA awards. The award also provides the usual allowance of a stop-over or a single open-jaw (but not both).

In the end, I had to take an overnight in LAX on the outbound because the BOS-LAX availability on DL was terrible. Similarly, the agent wasn’t able to turn up award inventory from SIN-BKK in any booking class. When I first started to investigate this award (a few weeks prior) there were seats available in Y for these flights, however, it had dried up by the time I had the miles to book. In retrospect, I should have checked into KUL as well but I didn’t think of it at the time. The final routing I settled on was: BOS-ATL-LAX, overnight, LAX-NRT-SIN-HKG-SFO-ATL-BOS.

Ok, so the fact that I scored seats on SQ F is great and all but you are probably wondering about those “taxes and fees.” In short, the fees are astronomical if you are accustomed to UA’s award fees. This ticket ended up costing me $499.97. The fare details are included below for those interested. I haven’t had the time to go through the breakdown myself.

Fare Details: BOS DL X/ATL DL X/LAX SQ SIN Q25.00M0.00FFF700/FQ346 SQ X/SFO Q25.00DL X/ATL DL BOS M0.00FFF700/FQ346 NUC50.00END ROE1.00 ZP BOSATL Fare: 50.00 USD Form of Payment ****************
Tax: 449.97 TX FP A/CUSD50.00/XT499.97/TL549.97Total: 499.97 USD Org FOP Free

In summary, I was able to use my pre-existing DL miles (around 103k) along with around $730 to get my ticket for spring break. Sure, it’s quite a lot of $$$ for an award ticket but if it means that I get a good chance at trying the A380 in F I figure it is well worth it. If not, I suppose it is still a good deal considering what I’d end up paying for a revenue Y ticket to that part of the world.

Given that it’s Tuesday, it’s time for a reader photo. Thanks to mudba for sending in this one.

Correct Answer: Palmyra, Syria
Winner: Tom Molta

If you’d like your photo featured, please email it to me at onemileatatime@hotmail.com, along with the correct answer.

I’m trying to help finalize the details for the trip my brother and mom are taking to Egypt next month, and right now we’re trying to book the intra-Egypt flights. They’re looking at booking CAI-LXR roundtrip and CAI-SSH roundtrip. For two people this comes out to around $750 total for all four flights on the US EgyptAir website, while it comes out to half that on the Egyptian EgyptAir website.

I tried booking it on the Egyptian EgyptAir website, but when I enter CC info I get an error message, seemingly because I don’t have an Egyptian CC.

So any thoughts on how to get a cheaper rate? Is there some consolidator that could sell us the cheaper flights? Is there any sneaky way to book on the Egyptian EgyptAir website?

I started a thread on FlyerTalk about this, but haven’t received a definitive response, although there have been some good suggestions.

So, does anyone have any ideas? Any help would be appreciated, either via the comments section below or via email at onemileatatime@hotmail.com.